Thursday, January 5, 2012

Challenge Accepted!

In keeping with my New Year's resolution of being a more interactive blogger, I'm signing myself up for a few reading challenges.

The Debut Author Challenge, hosted by The Story Siren, looks like just my cup of tea. I love reading debut authors! A quick count tells me I read and reviewed nearly 20 books by debut authors last year, so I'm thinking I can probably manage the official goal of the challenge, which is to read and review at least 12 middle grade or young adult novels this year.

The first debut novel I'm reading this year is Incarnate, by Jodi Meadows. Thanks, HarperCollins and NetGalley!

Eye-catching cover, right? I'm only about 25 pages in, but the story is intriguing so far. I'm really liking it.

I'm also going to try the Newbery Book Challenge, hosted by Mr. Schu and Colby Sharp. This challege encourages participants to read every single Newbery book... ambitious, right?? But the challenge very kindly allows for modifications and above all, NO STRESS.

So I'm going to take Mr. Schu's advice and simply commit myself to reading one Newbery winner from each decade this year. I have way too much going on to read all the Newberys, and to be honest, that's not a particular goal of mine. But I am curious about some of the older Newbery winners, and I'm sure I can find at least one winner per decade that I'll enjoy.

I haven't decided yet what I'm going to read from the 1920s, but my selection from the 1930s will be Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, by Dorothy P. Lathrop.

When I was a kid, my mom told me it was a really good story, and I completely blew off her suggestion because I was the kind of reader who needed to discover books on my own. (Also, maybe because I was being kind of a brat.) I'm sorry, Mom. I'm going to read Hitty, and I bet you're right about this book!

How about the rest of you? Are you excited about any particular reading challenges this year? Any tips? Recommendations?

4 comments:

Both challenges sound awesome! So here's my question... how do you acquire all of your debuts? I've always been intrigued by that challenge, but I pretty much only read library books, and I don't know if my library really gets brand spankin' new books in that quickly.

Katie, I pretty much read from library books or NetGalley. Libraries usually try to get the latest releases in a timely manner, so if your isn't, tell them to stop slackin'! Just kidding-- the sad truth is, there may be budget issues. But if you're interested in particular forthcoming titles, you should definitely try telling your librarian. When patrons request that we purchase particular books, we try our best to meet their needs!

Abby, that's so funny- I wonder how many of us librarians were that kind of reader as kids, and yet find ourselves doing reader's advisory all the time now. Hopefully the people we advise actually want our suggestions! Ha...